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United Kingdom13775 Posts
At this point, denying that global warming is real is an almost farcical gesture that ignores reality. What is true, however, is that not all climate scientists have acted in good faith, and have fudged specifics for a political purpose. This leads to a situation where it's harder to trust them.
That said, it should be treated with urgency and the Paris deal should be respected, end of story.
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On February 08 2017 00:35 Doodsmack wrote:Show nested quote +On February 07 2017 17:01 Danglars wrote:On February 07 2017 15:16 ChristianS wrote:On February 07 2017 14:21 Danglars wrote:Are technica penning about as slanted a reply as Daily Mail in its initial write up, from scare-quoting the whistleblower on down. I congratulate Lamar Smith for his efforts on the matter. The pause quickly went from being explained away (even in this thread, that models accounted for a long halt) to there never having been a pause at all many years after the fact. That's a big enough deal in my opinion to look at. If this is science fact, there should be transparency on outside analysis, not claiming fishing expeditions and the like. Fact is, Trump's EPA pick is highly critical of how the issue has been handled governmentally up until now. The next four years will almost certainly have a doubter as head of the environmental protection agency. So everyone best get ready to convince rather than shut down debate. Especially talking from an economic perspective, because Perry Smith and Tillerson won't be crusaders on the issue. I don't think I've ever seen that debate be productive. The opposing side is denialist at its root - the whole anti-environmentalist movement is essentially bound together by disbelief of the scientific consensus, rather than belief in some alternative hypothesis which can be proven or disproven. What are the alternative explanations for the data? Sun cycles? Wobble in Earth's orbit? God toying with us? They're all either already disproven or unfalsifiable non-explanations. So instead of pushing another hypothesis the denialists prefer to watch the climate scientists and heckle when something goes differently than expected. Of course none of the unexpected developments actually disprove the consensus like they seem to think; it's like flat earthers celebrating because someone miscalculated the radius of the Earth. The evidence isn't actually more in their favor just because someone's climate model mispredicted something, but they figure if they sow enough doubt and mistrust about the science in general (notably without any effort to distinguish between the more speculative predictions and the more ironclad discoveries), they can convince an ill-informed public thru shouldn't trust anything the scientists say, regardless of evidence, no matter how emphatically they state their discovery. That "debate" has never been productive, at least not that I've seen. Well have fun the next four years. Denialist is coming to be the slur with no substance. If scientists cannot practice science with examination at this stage, they invite criticism and deserve incredulity. It's entirely the style of argumentation without consideration that tries to turn whistleblowers into pariahs and activists into saints. The latest was Shrodinger's Climate Pause: it's an explainable pause and a data artifact at the same time, and the field is so advanced it takes a decade of explaining away the data before the data suddenly changes to not need an explanation. Wake up and smell what reeks. A modern field with accepted explanations shouldn't need this level of CYA and blaming-the-whistleblower. Keep this up and the environment/climate change might drop to poll from 12th most pressing issue facing the nation to 13th-15th to 18th and below. By not offering an actual alternative explanation or theory regarding whether man made warming has occurred, you haven't actually moved the debate forward.
Who said anything about moving the debate forward? 
You've moved the debate backward, and lost an election. If you have trouble seeing my 'ample cause for doubt' argument in the context of the links, try reading it again. If you're unfamiliar with climate skeptic arguments, I suggest using google.
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On February 08 2017 00:43 LegalLord wrote:
At this point, denying that global warming is real is an almost farcical gesture that ignores reality. What is true, however, is that not all climate scientists have acted in good faith, and have fudged specifics for a political purpose. This leads to a situation where it's harder to trust them.
That said, it should be treated with urgency and the Paris deal should be respected, end of story.
Given the size of its economic impact, the agreement should've been presented to the Senate for ratification. If Trump plans on abiding by it, he should be the one to correct Obama's sidelining of the constitutional process. And just like when this came up before in this thread (just search, guys), the scientific community should first acknowledge the great harm that has been done to in order to help people believe the consensus moving forward is truly independent and not enforced by blacklists, funding, and various penalties for criticism.
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There are climate denialists of different ideas, is what I believe is putting Danglers off.
There are those that absolutely do not believe the global temperature is rising. This would be like flat world believers.
There are those that do not believe a rise in temperatures is going to affect anything.
There are those that do believe global temperatures are rising, but do not believe it can be definitely attributed to humans only.
There are those that believe humans do contribute towards rising global temperatures, but the contribution is negligible in relation to other factors (insert factors here).
There are those that believe while humans may contribute a non-negligible portion towards rising global temperatures, they also believe the resultant effects is non-catastrophic and that it is not worth the current regulation trend.
There are those that believe while humans may contribute a non-negligible portion towards rising global temperatures, they don't care because they are in a location/position/time of their life that it doesn't matter to them.
By lumping everyone together as denialists, it does have a lack of finesse in responding with the right argument/corrective proposals.
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On February 08 2017 00:47 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On February 08 2017 00:35 Doodsmack wrote:On February 07 2017 17:01 Danglars wrote:On February 07 2017 15:16 ChristianS wrote:On February 07 2017 14:21 Danglars wrote:Are technica penning about as slanted a reply as Daily Mail in its initial write up, from scare-quoting the whistleblower on down. I congratulate Lamar Smith for his efforts on the matter. The pause quickly went from being explained away (even in this thread, that models accounted for a long halt) to there never having been a pause at all many years after the fact. That's a big enough deal in my opinion to look at. If this is science fact, there should be transparency on outside analysis, not claiming fishing expeditions and the like. Fact is, Trump's EPA pick is highly critical of how the issue has been handled governmentally up until now. The next four years will almost certainly have a doubter as head of the environmental protection agency. So everyone best get ready to convince rather than shut down debate. Especially talking from an economic perspective, because Perry Smith and Tillerson won't be crusaders on the issue. I don't think I've ever seen that debate be productive. The opposing side is denialist at its root - the whole anti-environmentalist movement is essentially bound together by disbelief of the scientific consensus, rather than belief in some alternative hypothesis which can be proven or disproven. What are the alternative explanations for the data? Sun cycles? Wobble in Earth's orbit? God toying with us? They're all either already disproven or unfalsifiable non-explanations. So instead of pushing another hypothesis the denialists prefer to watch the climate scientists and heckle when something goes differently than expected. Of course none of the unexpected developments actually disprove the consensus like they seem to think; it's like flat earthers celebrating because someone miscalculated the radius of the Earth. The evidence isn't actually more in their favor just because someone's climate model mispredicted something, but they figure if they sow enough doubt and mistrust about the science in general (notably without any effort to distinguish between the more speculative predictions and the more ironclad discoveries), they can convince an ill-informed public thru shouldn't trust anything the scientists say, regardless of evidence, no matter how emphatically they state their discovery. That "debate" has never been productive, at least not that I've seen. Well have fun the next four years. Denialist is coming to be the slur with no substance. If scientists cannot practice science with examination at this stage, they invite criticism and deserve incredulity. It's entirely the style of argumentation without consideration that tries to turn whistleblowers into pariahs and activists into saints. The latest was Shrodinger's Climate Pause: it's an explainable pause and a data artifact at the same time, and the field is so advanced it takes a decade of explaining away the data before the data suddenly changes to not need an explanation. Wake up and smell what reeks. A modern field with accepted explanations shouldn't need this level of CYA and blaming-the-whistleblower. Keep this up and the environment/climate change might drop to poll from 12th most pressing issue facing the nation to 13th-15th to 18th and below. By not offering an actual alternative explanation or theory regarding whether man made warming has occurred, you haven't actually moved the debate forward. Who said anything about moving the debate forward? You've moved the debate backward, and lost an election. If you have trouble seeing my 'ample cause for doubt' argument in the context of the links, try reading it again. If you're unfamiliar with climate skeptic arguments, I suggest using google.
Well you still haven't offered an alternative explanation. You can complain about liberals and the media, and that's fine, but your assertion about what policy should be should incorporate an alternative explanation. When you say "go look elsewhere" it doesn't seem like a very well supported viewpoint.
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On February 08 2017 00:57 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On February 08 2017 00:43 LegalLord wrote:
At this point, denying that global warming is real is an almost farcical gesture that ignores reality. What is true, however, is that not all climate scientists have acted in good faith, and have fudged specifics for a political purpose. This leads to a situation where it's harder to trust them.
That said, it should be treated with urgency and the Paris deal should be respected, end of story. Given the size of its economic impact, the agreement should've been presented to the Senate for ratification. If Trump plans on abiding by it, he should be the one to correct Obama's sidelining of the constitutional process. And just like when this came up before in this thread (just search, guys), the scientific community should first acknowledge the great harm that has been done to in order to help people believe the consensus moving forward is truly independent and not enforced by blacklists, funding, and various penalties for criticism.
On February 08 2017 00:43 LegalLord wrote:
At this point, denying that global warming is real is an almost farcical gesture that ignores reality. What is true, however, is that not all climate scientists have acted in good faith, and have fudged specifics for a political purpose. This leads to a situation where it's harder to trust them.
That said, it should be treated with urgency and the Paris deal should be respected, end of story.
Unsurprisingly, scientists are people too. And in a publish-or-perish ratrace it's very tempting to not apply the proper rigour to one's own work. Add that to a peer review system which is basically run by volunteers, and there will be bad apples publishing bad science. The better the journal, the more trustworthy the science will be (if only because more people read it, and will remark on bad statistical rigour or other problems). That said, scientists themselves (me included) are often the first to point out everything that is wrong with their field, including the really big problems with peer review.
One does not trust individual scientists. One trusts "science". I believe we had this discussion already (either here or in Ask and Answer Stupid Questions" thread, about what makes a "scientist" untrustworthy, and a "large number of scientists" trustworthy... and ventured off into epistemology, so I suggest we don't repeat it).
However, the "scientific community" is as much of a nebulous non-thing as "the left" or "the right". Who should be the one to apologize for the harm done? Unscrupulous scientists get blacklisted from journals and fired from their cushy university positions (or in the case of postdocs, fired from their shitty university positions). I have not yet seen a case where a university protected someone knowingly doing bad science, or a journal didn't retract a paper after evidence it was falsified/fudged. So please point me to where the "scientific community" has acted corruptly, and not some very tiny minority of bad individuals.
Moreover, what the "daily mail" calls bad science is of no interest to anyone. It should stick to covering Brangelina's divorce and leave scientific reporting to people who know their ass from their elbow.
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On February 07 2017 23:49 TheTenthDoc wrote:So Melania Trump is suing the Daily Mail for defamation...and claiming one of the harms of their defamation was hurting her prospects at launching multi-million dollar brands as First Lady. You can read the suit itself in the article, it's very clearly about a multi-year period so it isn't about the period running up to the election (since the defaming article was released in August 2016). Isn't that kind of not supposed to be allowed? Or is this another "rules don't apply because she's already rich so we can't expect her not to make more money?"
Are there actually rules prohibiting the First lady from using her position to make money?
Remember, there are no real laws prohibiting a President from using his position to make money (which is why Trump still owns alls his businesses and the 'papers' giving away control were fake)
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On February 07 2017 20:04 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Show nested quote +On February 07 2017 12:56 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:As the press secretary for a president who's obsessed with how things play on cable TV, Sean Spicer’s real audience during his daily televised press briefings has always been an audience of one.
And the devastating “Saturday Night Live” caricature of Spicer that aired over the weekend — in which a belligerent Spicer was spoofed by a gum-chomping, super soaker-wielding Melissa McCarthy in drag — did not go over well internally at a White House in which looks matter.
More than being lampooned as a press secretary who makes up facts, it was Spicer’s portrayal by a woman that was most problematic in the president’s eyes, according to sources close to him. And the unflattering send-up by a female comedian was not considered helpful for Spicer’s longevity in the grueling, high-profile job in which he has struggled to strike the right balance between representing an administration that considers the media the "opposition party," and developing a functional relationship with the press.
"Trump doesn't like his people to look weak," added a top Trump donor.
Trump’s uncharacteristic Twitter silence over the weekend about the “Saturday Night Live” sketch was seen internally as a sign of how uncomfortable it made the White House feel. Sources said the caricature of Spicer by McCarthy struck a nerve and was upsetting to the press secretary and to his allies, who immediately saw how damaging it could be in Trump world.
Spicer on Monday was traveling aboard Air Force One from Florida to Washington, D.C., and gamely shrugged off the spoof that was playing in loops on cable news throughout the day.
McCarthy, he said, “needs to slow down on the gum chewing; way too many pieces in there,” he joked in an interview with Extra.
And on Monday, Spicer’s allies were trying to put a happy face on the incident. "He takes the job seriously but doesn't take himself that seriously," said a person close to Spicer, who said he also understood the instant-viral skit helped him reach a new level of fame. "He knows that put him up on the stratosphere of recognition on a level," this person said. "You've got to embrace it."
But on Tuesday, Spicer has the uncomfortable task of facing reporters once again in the briefing room — where the elephant in the room will be the unflattering McCarthy caricature. Source As much as I like Alec Baldwin's impersonation of Trump, I would looooove a Muslim woman to parody Trump. That would be the hugest blow to Trump's ego ever.
Following up on this... http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/318221-rosie-odonnell-says-she-would-play-steve-bannon-on-snl-is-asked
This would be amazing, considering how much Trump hates Rosie.
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There are a lot of conflicting data out there when it comes to climate science, but for me it has always boiled down to: If climate change is fake, propagated by scientists on a payroll to further some other agenda, who is paying for it?
You would think, given the stakes, that if there were any validity at all to the theory that man has nothing to do with global climate change, oil companies would have been able to successfully prove that, or at least disprove man-made climate change. The polar bears and island-dwellers with the most to gain from radical climate regulations don't really have the funds for lobbyists and scientific foundations.
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On February 07 2017 14:21 Danglars wrote:Are technica penning about as slanted a reply as Daily Mail in its initial write up, from scare-quoting the whistleblower on down. I congratulate Lamar Smith for his efforts on the matter. The pause quickly went from being explained away (even in this thread, that models accounted for a long halt) to there never having been a pause at all many years after the fact. That's a big enough deal in my opinion to look at. If this is science fact, there should be transparency on outside analysis, not claiming fishing expeditions and the like. Fact is, Trump's EPA pick is highly critical of how the issue has been handled governmentally up until now. The next four years will almost certainly have a doubter as head of the environmental protection agency. So everyone best get ready to convince rather than shut down debate. Especially talking from an economic perspective, because Perry Smith and Tillerson won't be crusaders on the issue.
a very interesting counterpoint from ars technica.
pity the republican committee chair is the usual politican scum, trying to push a story that supports his narrative rather than be careful and rigorous in figuring out what occurred.
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"Smart!" That's what President Trump or one of his aides wrote on Facebook a few days ago, linking to a story by a Middle Eastern blogging site.
The headline on the Albawaba story said "Kuwait Issues Its Own Trump-esque Visa Ban for Muslim-Majority Countries."
But the anonymously-sourced story is unproven. Multiple governments have denied it. It's the kind of story that the president might decry as "fake news," were it not beneficial to him.
The Facebook post went up on Trump's official page last Thursday. It gained more attention from fact-checkers over the weekend.
As of Monday afternoon, the link is still there, gaining "likes" and comments on Facebook. It has not attracted the attention of Facebook's recent effort to flag disputed stories with a warning label.
CNN
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On February 08 2017 01:01 JinDesu wrote:
There are climate denialists of different ideas, is what I believe is putting Danglers off.
There are those that absolutely do not believe the global temperature is rising. This would be like flat world believers.
There are those that do not believe a rise in temperatures is going to affect anything.
There are those that do believe global temperatures are rising, but do not believe it can be definitely attributed to humans only.
There are those that believe humans do contribute towards rising global temperatures, but the contribution is negligible in relation to other factors (insert factors here).
There are those that believe while humans may contribute a non-negligible portion towards rising global temperatures, they also believe the resultant effects is non-catastrophic and that it is not worth the current regulation trend.
There are those that believe while humans may contribute a non-negligible portion towards rising global temperatures, they don't care because they are in a location/position/time of their life that it doesn't matter to them.
By lumping everyone together as denialists, it does have a lack of finesse in responding with the right argument/corrective proposals.
Agreed that lumping everyone together under that heading is inelegant, but one can hardly be asked to anticipate and respond to every possible hypothesis the denialists might or might not believe. Denialists usually don't put forward alternate hypotheses, because there aren't really any good ones. Even with the benefit of hindsight they can't offer better explanations of the facts than the scientific consensus. So instead they point to holes at the fringe where scientists can't always predict the evidence perfectly, and use it as an excuse to reject large swaths of scientific fact without considering the merits. If people want us to consider their own explanation of the facts they should put it forward, until then they're just heckling.
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On February 08 2017 01:03 Doodsmack wrote:Show nested quote +On February 08 2017 00:47 Danglars wrote:On February 08 2017 00:35 Doodsmack wrote:On February 07 2017 17:01 Danglars wrote:On February 07 2017 15:16 ChristianS wrote:On February 07 2017 14:21 Danglars wrote:Are technica penning about as slanted a reply as Daily Mail in its initial write up, from scare-quoting the whistleblower on down. I congratulate Lamar Smith for his efforts on the matter. The pause quickly went from being explained away (even in this thread, that models accounted for a long halt) to there never having been a pause at all many years after the fact. That's a big enough deal in my opinion to look at. If this is science fact, there should be transparency on outside analysis, not claiming fishing expeditions and the like. Fact is, Trump's EPA pick is highly critical of how the issue has been handled governmentally up until now. The next four years will almost certainly have a doubter as head of the environmental protection agency. So everyone best get ready to convince rather than shut down debate. Especially talking from an economic perspective, because Perry Smith and Tillerson won't be crusaders on the issue. I don't think I've ever seen that debate be productive. The opposing side is denialist at its root - the whole anti-environmentalist movement is essentially bound together by disbelief of the scientific consensus, rather than belief in some alternative hypothesis which can be proven or disproven. What are the alternative explanations for the data? Sun cycles? Wobble in Earth's orbit? God toying with us? They're all either already disproven or unfalsifiable non-explanations. So instead of pushing another hypothesis the denialists prefer to watch the climate scientists and heckle when something goes differently than expected. Of course none of the unexpected developments actually disprove the consensus like they seem to think; it's like flat earthers celebrating because someone miscalculated the radius of the Earth. The evidence isn't actually more in their favor just because someone's climate model mispredicted something, but they figure if they sow enough doubt and mistrust about the science in general (notably without any effort to distinguish between the more speculative predictions and the more ironclad discoveries), they can convince an ill-informed public thru shouldn't trust anything the scientists say, regardless of evidence, no matter how emphatically they state their discovery. That "debate" has never been productive, at least not that I've seen. Well have fun the next four years. Denialist is coming to be the slur with no substance. If scientists cannot practice science with examination at this stage, they invite criticism and deserve incredulity. It's entirely the style of argumentation without consideration that tries to turn whistleblowers into pariahs and activists into saints. The latest was Shrodinger's Climate Pause: it's an explainable pause and a data artifact at the same time, and the field is so advanced it takes a decade of explaining away the data before the data suddenly changes to not need an explanation. Wake up and smell what reeks. A modern field with accepted explanations shouldn't need this level of CYA and blaming-the-whistleblower. Keep this up and the environment/climate change might drop to poll from 12th most pressing issue facing the nation to 13th-15th to 18th and below. By not offering an actual alternative explanation or theory regarding whether man made warming has occurred, you haven't actually moved the debate forward. Who said anything about moving the debate forward? You've moved the debate backward, and lost an election. If you have trouble seeing my 'ample cause for doubt' argument in the context of the links, try reading it again. If you're unfamiliar with climate skeptic arguments, I suggest using google. Well you still haven't offered an alternative explanation. You can complain about liberals and the media, and that's fine, but your assertion about what policy should be should incorporate an alternative explanation. When you say "go look elsewhere" it doesn't seem like a very well supported viewpoint.
You haven't understood a single word, or you're asking the wrong questions, or just being a troll trying to be fed. What part of "x y, and z show these troubling factors about the modern climate change debate" do you not understand? If I wanted to take up ChristianS's assertion about how the skeptics are bound together and why that matters, I would've responded on that point. I see no reason to continue expanding the topic if the basis of whistle-blowing is irrationally diminished and no allowance is given to how scientists have been breeding their own distrust.
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On February 06 2017 04:39 Blisse wrote:Speaking of ISIS I found this Reddit comment which was really understandable https://np.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5s0whp/eli5_why_is_a_terrorist_organization_like_isis_so/ddc8qz4/?sh=6204f991&st=IYS6UHFPShow nested quote +TL;DR: To almost every actor in the region, they are more useful alive than dead
To understand the answer, we must first understand some significant points:
1) Any answer that says "x is the main problem" is super simplistic. It may have part of a problem, but, like the rest of the grown up problems of the world, a complex issue like ISIS/terrorism cannot be reduced to a single point.
2) There are always more questions than clear answers. This is a significant problem when lives are at stake, but I do believe that, given the research over the last century or so, we have a fairly reasonable idea.
The single sentence answer, which necessarily needs to be broken down into a thousand different pieces, is as follows:
The vast majority of terrorism in the last two centuries has been committed due to the political interaction of identity and the state
To understand this completely, we have to understand the concept of the nation. Most people around the world feel nationality in at least three levels:
1) Lowest level - The state as a function of nation 2) Mid level - the Ethnic group as a nation 3) Highest level - Religious group as a nation
There are other "nations" as well, but these three are the most common. Now, the marriage of Westphalian peace that designated (theoretically) standard borders and the increased centralization and power of governments, the challenge became to somehow synthesize these three. The idea of a political "people" is born. The most cohesive state, then, was one where people shared all three national identities. The least cohesive state was one that had neither 2nd or 3rd, and thus even the function of the state as a nation fall into peril.
Following the peace at Westphalia, Europe was consumed by violence which was primarily nationalistic violence. Between revolutions, revolts, genocides, and ethnic cleansing, Europe was a blood bath from 1648 to 1945. When one portion of Europe reached stability, another portion was lit ablaze by nationalist politics.
The Arab world never had that moment. Even after the fall of colonial powers in the Arab world, the cold war politics of the US and Russia necessitated that the Middle East, a key region in the cold war, could not suffer the instability like that of Europe after Westphalia. So strong men were put in place who clamped down on the political negotiations which are required for the long term stability of a state which functions as a nation (A nation state).
Now, fast forward to today. The strong men of the Arab world collapse (Saddam and Yemen forcefully, Mubarak, Qadhafi, and Assad by public pressure). This unleashes a huge tide of suppressed nationalist politics, which is always, always, always both disastrously bloody and excessively violent. Add in the Western exploitation of Pan-Islamism for combating the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, which leads to 9/11 (once the Soviets were defeated in Afghanistan, Al Qaeda and other mujahideen groups focused on two other Empires encroaching on "Muslim sovereignty," the US (Iraq, Palestine, the Gulf) and Russia (Chechnya)).
Now, how does this lead to terrorism against the West?
The West obviously has a terrible reputation in the Middle East, going back two centuries. But America's bad reputation starts in the 50s, with the opposition of the United States to Mossadeq, the United States propping up of Israel, the US opposition to Nasser (who was extremely popular in the Arab world), and the United States support of dictators. Now, add the Iraq sanctions and the Iraq War II, and you get just flaming hatred for the West.
That hatred is used by the Pan-Islamists in fighting the US wherever it has presence in the Muslim world. But, for nationalists like ISIS, it has a much more sinister use.
Attacking "the West" creates legitimacy for ISIS. Due to the involvement of the US during the cold war (and after) in the Middle East, hatred for the West is immense in the Arab world. Attacks against the "oppressors," then, serves as a legitimizing tool in a fight where manpower is at a premium.
This leads us to ISIS of today. It is a nationalist movement which gains legitimacy for showing how it is fighting the historic oppressors by bringing the war to them. "We are doing to them what they have been doing to us" is the line they use consistently in their recruitment material. The goal, though, is to swell their ranks LOCALLY, not to actually harm the west in any way. No one seriously thinks ISIS is creating any real national security risk for Western nation -- not ISIS, and not Western nations. This is just a really great propaganda tool for them.
Now, given all the above, why is ISIS so difficult to defeat:
The reason why ISIS in particular has not been defeated, is, primarily power politics:
1) Power politics between nations always supersedes the threat of terrorist organizations
2) ISIS is not the main concern of Middle Eastern nations. The power imbalance and vacuum between Iran, the Gulf allies, and Turkey is
3) The Syrian civil war adds to those complications significantly
4) Nations are more focused on fighting for power balance than against ISIS
5) In managing the power politics in the Middle East, ISIS is actually useful for most if not all powers in the area
Let's give a couple examples:
1) Turkey:
Turkey was fighting Assad in Syria, but the Kurds to the north were a serious threat to their territorial integrity. As such, they helped ISIS fight the kurds to the north as well. But to assuage Western powers, they made a show of fighting ISIS as well.
2) Saudi:
Saudi is actively funding ISIS to push back Iranian allied Syria and Iraq and force Iran into a perpetual war with ISIS. This is because the Gulf allies are terrified of being surrounded by the Iranian led alliance of Iran, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen. It therefore needs to ally with groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda to force Iran into perpetual war and keep it from cementing that alliance.
3) Iran:
Iran wants to fight ISIS. It really does. It's probably the most active in fighting ISIS. But it can't make a death blow to ISIS yet, because of Iraq and Russia.
4) Russia:
ISIS is extremely useful to Russia. As long as ISIS remains a force, it provides Russia diplomatic cover for its activities in support of Assad as long as it can shove a few bombs towards ISIS and say that it's there for terrorism. Therefore, Russia NEEDS ISIS to assist its ally Assad.
5) Iraq:
Iraq is a key ally to Iran, and ISIS is an existential threat to the Shia regime there. BUT airpower is extremely limited in efficacy, Iraq doesn't have a strong enough ground force to take ISIS on itself, the US won't allow the only other real enemy of ISIS (Iran) into Iraq en masse to defeat ISIS, and the other members of the anti-ISIS coalition see ISIS as to useful to destroy just yet
6) The US and the Western Allies:
This is where things get really fun. The West wants to defeat ISIS. But to do so would effectively hand Syria to Russia\ and Iraq to Iran, making a giant power block from Iran to Syria and Yemen to the south. So it wants to use Iraqi ground forces to force ISIS into Syria and let them fight it out in the Syrian civil war, while putting diplo pressure on Iraq to break its ties with Iran and try to isolate Iran diplomatically.
The key to defeating ISIS:
1) End the Syrian civil war 2) Bring about political reproachment in Iraq and Yemen 3) The powers in the area will crush ISIS in a day
Edit: All the above is an interpretation consistent with the theories of the school of realism in international relations. For more information about the realist school, read "The Man, the State, and War" by Kenneth Waltz, "Theory of International Politics," by Waltz again. For my favorite sub school, offensive realism, read "Tragedy of Great Power Politics" by John Mearsheimer. I think some things are simplistic but is there anything grossly wrong with the interpretation? Also love the SNL Spicer Press Conference.
Iran is mostly fighting against other rebel groups aiding the regime in many fronts, they are not particularly fighting isis, they are strongly in favor of keeping Assad in power and have sent thousands of troops to make sure that it happens. I would say that the most active players in fighting isis right now are the SDF/Kurd alliance, Syrian Army, the TFSA and the coalition.
I don't see isis as an existential threat to Iran, not having Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon as proxies / allies would be. The us doesn't allow iranian troops in mass into Iraq ? Oh well, the PMU and other shia militias have been armed and financed by Iran and are doing a good job in Mosul fighting isis.
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On February 08 2017 01:15 Acrofales wrote:
I have not yet seen a case where a university protected someone knowingly doing bad science, or a journal didn't retract a paper after evidence it was falsified/fudged. So please point me to where the "scientific community" has acted corruptly, and not some very tiny minority of bad individuals.
A quick search turned up this letter and the response, eventually concluding here.
Summary: Amateur climate scientist Steve McIntyre asks tier one journal Science to enforce their rules on data availability by leaning on several authors to provide the raw data that their papers used (among other information). Science enforces it in 2/6 (eventually 3/6) cases.
The Science articles involving the withheld data remain widely cited.
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On February 08 2017 02:16 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On February 08 2017 01:03 Doodsmack wrote:On February 08 2017 00:47 Danglars wrote:On February 08 2017 00:35 Doodsmack wrote:On February 07 2017 17:01 Danglars wrote:On February 07 2017 15:16 ChristianS wrote:On February 07 2017 14:21 Danglars wrote:Are technica penning about as slanted a reply as Daily Mail in its initial write up, from scare-quoting the whistleblower on down. I congratulate Lamar Smith for his efforts on the matter. The pause quickly went from being explained away (even in this thread, that models accounted for a long halt) to there never having been a pause at all many years after the fact. That's a big enough deal in my opinion to look at. If this is science fact, there should be transparency on outside analysis, not claiming fishing expeditions and the like. Fact is, Trump's EPA pick is highly critical of how the issue has been handled governmentally up until now. The next four years will almost certainly have a doubter as head of the environmental protection agency. So everyone best get ready to convince rather than shut down debate. Especially talking from an economic perspective, because Perry Smith and Tillerson won't be crusaders on the issue. I don't think I've ever seen that debate be productive. The opposing side is denialist at its root - the whole anti-environmentalist movement is essentially bound together by disbelief of the scientific consensus, rather than belief in some alternative hypothesis which can be proven or disproven. What are the alternative explanations for the data? Sun cycles? Wobble in Earth's orbit? God toying with us? They're all either already disproven or unfalsifiable non-explanations. So instead of pushing another hypothesis the denialists prefer to watch the climate scientists and heckle when something goes differently than expected. Of course none of the unexpected developments actually disprove the consensus like they seem to think; it's like flat earthers celebrating because someone miscalculated the radius of the Earth. The evidence isn't actually more in their favor just because someone's climate model mispredicted something, but they figure if they sow enough doubt and mistrust about the science in general (notably without any effort to distinguish between the more speculative predictions and the more ironclad discoveries), they can convince an ill-informed public thru shouldn't trust anything the scientists say, regardless of evidence, no matter how emphatically they state their discovery. That "debate" has never been productive, at least not that I've seen. Well have fun the next four years. Denialist is coming to be the slur with no substance. If scientists cannot practice science with examination at this stage, they invite criticism and deserve incredulity. It's entirely the style of argumentation without consideration that tries to turn whistleblowers into pariahs and activists into saints. The latest was Shrodinger's Climate Pause: it's an explainable pause and a data artifact at the same time, and the field is so advanced it takes a decade of explaining away the data before the data suddenly changes to not need an explanation. Wake up and smell what reeks. A modern field with accepted explanations shouldn't need this level of CYA and blaming-the-whistleblower. Keep this up and the environment/climate change might drop to poll from 12th most pressing issue facing the nation to 13th-15th to 18th and below. By not offering an actual alternative explanation or theory regarding whether man made warming has occurred, you haven't actually moved the debate forward. Who said anything about moving the debate forward? You've moved the debate backward, and lost an election. If you have trouble seeing my 'ample cause for doubt' argument in the context of the links, try reading it again. If you're unfamiliar with climate skeptic arguments, I suggest using google. Well you still haven't offered an alternative explanation. You can complain about liberals and the media, and that's fine, but your assertion about what policy should be should incorporate an alternative explanation. When you say "go look elsewhere" it doesn't seem like a very well supported viewpoint. You haven't understood a single word, or you're asking the wrong questions, or just being a troll trying to be fed. What part of "x y, and z show these troubling factors about the modern climate change debate" do you not understand? If I wanted to take up ChristianS's assertion about how the skeptics are bound together and why that matters, I would've responded on that point. I see no reason to continue expanding the topic if the basis of whistle-blowing is irrationally diminished and no allowance is given to how scientists have been breeding their own distrust.
Regarding the whistleblowing, this is the relevant part:
Bates alleges that NOAA's Tom Karl and the rest of the team behind the paper failed to adequately follow NOAA’s internal processes for archiving their data and stress-testing the updated databases they used.
I don't know how tech savvy you are, but unless it afterwards turns out that there was actually something wrong with their data, this is entirely irrelevant. They *should* have followed protocol. The protocol is there to ensure data is correct before publication. They rushed it. It's not a great precedent, and should really not happen.
But unless rushing a paper leads to false results/conclusions, it is not evidence of anything other than that proper protocol wasn't followed... and posterior follow-up research of the data has not shown any discrepancies in it, so the former seems very unlikely.
Given the internal strife over this protocol in the first place (obviously this is all NOAA dirty laundry here, so what exactly Bates' reasons for whistleblowing are, we don't know), it seems completely appropriate to diminish the claim. Science should (and undoubtedly does) follow up on this and there will undoubtedly be an audit in NOAA to doublecheck the data, but there doesn't seem any reason at all so far to doubt its veracity.
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On February 08 2017 00:39 Simberto wrote:Show nested quote +On February 08 2017 00:13 Sermokala wrote:On February 08 2017 00:06 Velr wrote:On February 07 2017 23:57 Sermokala wrote:
I'd think creationists would be given more credibility scientifically then deniers. Thats because "creationism" is a very creative field, its actually some form of literature/philosophy/fiction :p. You don't "disregard" Facts, you just create new ones up that work "together" with the actual Facts. Its "extra-special-creative-Facts" on top of "Facts". Denial is just "alternative Facts". But still you can end up with a genuine shrug from someone who doesn't agree with creationists when you are both on the same page of facts. The big bang and dark matter are as faith based explination as saying a mythical god caused it and does it. That is because dark matter and the big bang are not "done science". You can use telescopes to look pretty far into the past, but once you get to about 13.3 billions of years ago, the universe is so full of stuff that you can't actually look through it anymore, so you can't look further back than that. You can, however, use the data you have from the points in time that you can see, and especially redshift data, to make a model that fits the stuff we can observe. And that model leads to a big bang. Dark matter and Dark energy are similarly weird concepts that are used to make the things we observe fit to the laws of nature that we already know. Galaxies rotate in a way that can only be explained if there is a lot of matter that we can not observe. We don't know what that stuff is, but at this point, either our understanding of gravity is a bit off or there is stuff we can't see in space. A lot of that stuff. Both can be correct, but since no one has come up with a better theory of gravity that explains all the stuff we currently know, we now work of the assumption that there is this nebulous dark matter, and try to figure out what that stuff actually is. Dark energy is something that is necessary to explain why the universe expands in the way we can observe it expanding. We have even less of an idea about it than about dark matter, but once again we either have dark energy, or something is fundamentally wrong with our understanding of how the expansion of space itself works. Since so far noone has had a better theory about how space expands, that explains both the stuff we know AND the effects currently attributed to dark energy, we try to figure out what that dark energy could be. But these things are all far from scientific fact, and thus they don't really require faith. In fact, faith is counterproductive. They represent problems that we are in the process of trying to figure out. We have models that explain the things that we can observe. Of course you can always explain everything with "god does it because god wants to do it". But that is not a very productive point of view, as there is no additional knowledge to be gained from it, nor can predictions be made using it. It is a completely nonfalsifiable theory, and thus we don't actually gain anything from it. Meanwhile, we gain a lot from trying to figure out what dark matter is, or if there is none, what else has the effect of galaxies not rotating in a way that is consistent to there only being the visible matter.
Your using a ton of words that don't amount to much. Dark matter and dark energy are not real things. They're just there beacuse it's the only way to make the models work but that's where they end. Adding made up concepts doesn't allow you to backtrack and come up with a new theory now that the model works. I don't see how beliving is non productive unless you apply that there is no need to figure out the how and the search for the how is compatible with both sides.
This is the Crux of my argument beacuse there is enough of a leap between faith in a creator and the belief in the opposite. There is an arguable gap in our current science that doesn't exist in global warming. I'm not interested in a faith conversation but that danglars can defend or argue for global warming deniers is worse then creationism debaters.
Beacuse it's anti Vax level I guess I should have gone.
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Betsy DeVos confirmed as secretary of education after a 51-50 vote in the Senate with Pence voting as a tiebreaker.
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
Hooray for party-line votes on issues like being qualified to run the Department of Education.
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On February 08 2017 02:16 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On February 08 2017 01:03 Doodsmack wrote:On February 08 2017 00:47 Danglars wrote:On February 08 2017 00:35 Doodsmack wrote:On February 07 2017 17:01 Danglars wrote:On February 07 2017 15:16 ChristianS wrote:On February 07 2017 14:21 Danglars wrote:Are technica penning about as slanted a reply as Daily Mail in its initial write up, from scare-quoting the whistleblower on down. I congratulate Lamar Smith for his efforts on the matter. The pause quickly went from being explained away (even in this thread, that models accounted for a long halt) to there never having been a pause at all many years after the fact. That's a big enough deal in my opinion to look at. If this is science fact, there should be transparency on outside analysis, not claiming fishing expeditions and the like. Fact is, Trump's EPA pick is highly critical of how the issue has been handled governmentally up until now. The next four years will almost certainly have a doubter as head of the environmental protection agency. So everyone best get ready to convince rather than shut down debate. Especially talking from an economic perspective, because Perry Smith and Tillerson won't be crusaders on the issue. I don't think I've ever seen that debate be productive. The opposing side is denialist at its root - the whole anti-environmentalist movement is essentially bound together by disbelief of the scientific consensus, rather than belief in some alternative hypothesis which can be proven or disproven. What are the alternative explanations for the data? Sun cycles? Wobble in Earth's orbit? God toying with us? They're all either already disproven or unfalsifiable non-explanations. So instead of pushing another hypothesis the denialists prefer to watch the climate scientists and heckle when something goes differently than expected. Of course none of the unexpected developments actually disprove the consensus like they seem to think; it's like flat earthers celebrating because someone miscalculated the radius of the Earth. The evidence isn't actually more in their favor just because someone's climate model mispredicted something, but they figure if they sow enough doubt and mistrust about the science in general (notably without any effort to distinguish between the more speculative predictions and the more ironclad discoveries), they can convince an ill-informed public thru shouldn't trust anything the scientists say, regardless of evidence, no matter how emphatically they state their discovery. That "debate" has never been productive, at least not that I've seen. Well have fun the next four years. Denialist is coming to be the slur with no substance. If scientists cannot practice science with examination at this stage, they invite criticism and deserve incredulity. It's entirely the style of argumentation without consideration that tries to turn whistleblowers into pariahs and activists into saints. The latest was Shrodinger's Climate Pause: it's an explainable pause and a data artifact at the same time, and the field is so advanced it takes a decade of explaining away the data before the data suddenly changes to not need an explanation. Wake up and smell what reeks. A modern field with accepted explanations shouldn't need this level of CYA and blaming-the-whistleblower. Keep this up and the environment/climate change might drop to poll from 12th most pressing issue facing the nation to 13th-15th to 18th and below. By not offering an actual alternative explanation or theory regarding whether man made warming has occurred, you haven't actually moved the debate forward. Who said anything about moving the debate forward? You've moved the debate backward, and lost an election. If you have trouble seeing my 'ample cause for doubt' argument in the context of the links, try reading it again. If you're unfamiliar with climate skeptic arguments, I suggest using google. Well you still haven't offered an alternative explanation. You can complain about liberals and the media, and that's fine, but your assertion about what policy should be should incorporate an alternative explanation. When you say "go look elsewhere" it doesn't seem like a very well supported viewpoint. You haven't understood a single word, or you're asking the wrong questions, or just being a troll trying to be fed. What part of "x y, and z show these troubling factors about the modern climate change debate" do you not understand? If I wanted to take up ChristianS's assertion about how the skeptics are bound together and why that matters, I would've responded on that point. I see no reason to continue expanding the topic if the basis of whistle-blowing is irrationally diminished and no allowance is given to how scientists have been breeding their own distrust.
Even admitting to those arguments though is small potatoes compared to the debate as a whole. There isn't any way to defend one side so why should people care what the only real side does in its persist of arguments.
Your better off arguing which side of the earth the sun rise from.
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EPT
